Castellan
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: The job title is 'Hogwarts caretaker', but for Severus Snape, the job involves so much more than that. Alternate universe. Supplemental material to 'Saint Potter'. Characters and situations that have diverged from canon. (Author Notes added, 17th June, 2013) ON HIATUS.


Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter. I am not Leslie Charteris either. I do not own The Saint.

Note: The following chapter concerns the Severus Snape of the 'Saint Potter' universe on the night of September the first, 1991, during a moment in proceedings when he goes to collect his eldest daughter from the station. Chronologically, the events depicted here slot in somewhere between Severus Snape's appearances in the fifth and sixth chapters of 'Gearing Up', and in between Sophie's departure from Hogsmeade Station and Severus Snape's exchanges with Rufus Scrimgeour in the 'Welcome to Hogwarts' chapter of 'Saint Potter'. This material is supplemental to the main 'Saint Potter' story. For those not familiar with 'Saint Potter' (or who find a reminder useful) this particular universe is an alternate one which was impacted by The Saint, and some regular Harry Potter characters and situations differ considerably from their canon counterparts. James Potter married Selene Tilde Tombs (a granddaughter of Simon Templar) and Sophie Theresa Potter is know as The-Girl-Who-Lived. Also in this universe, Severus Snape married Lily Evans, Severus is employed as the 'caretaker' of Hogwarts and Lily teaches history of magic at the school. They have a number of children, Erica (born in 1980) being the second oldest (and oldest girl).

* * *

Cloak billowing impressively, Severus Snape strode forth from the mouth of the Hogwarts № 1 goods tunnel into the bustle and clatter of the subterranean underside of Hogsmeade station. House-elves were bustling back and forth checking trunks for any signs of dark magic before 'cleared' ones were piled onto one of several waiting narrow-gauge flatbed trucks, to be taken through the tunnel to Hogwarts. The creak of ropes and the groan of pulleys marked the descent of another load of trunks down the elevator shaft from the station above. In theory the thestral-drawn carriages which took the pupils to school from the station by road could accommodate the trunks – they had done for centuries before the construction of the goods tunnel, after all – but it made far more sense, in terms of getting the pupils to school as fast as possible, to simply clear the pupils off the station straight away into the thestral carriages and bring the trunks up separately through the tunnel, rather than have pupils mill around on the platform whilst waiting to retrieve their trunks. The only pupils who wouldn't necessarily know to have anything they might immediately want in hand-luggage were first years – who weren't supposed to immediately want anything anyway on their first evening at Hogwarts.

The homeward bound end-of-term Expresses were another matter altogether when it came to requiring speedy access to trunks. The London-bound Express of the end-of-terms in Severus' own youth had been a nightmare, with fraying tempers and muttered threats by parents and children alike when it arrived at King's Cross and _everyone_ wanted to collect their trunks and get home as fast as possible. It was still tricky these days on the homeward Expresses, but at least with the stops at multiple stations, the pupils and families were broken up into manageable chunks.

But apparently things had been worse – much worse – in the bad old days before some genius in the nineteen-thirties had added baggage vans to the Express. Back _then_ it had been a matter of pupils or their families being able to shrink trunks in order to get them in their compartments with them, and there had been countless injuries and three fatalities from improperly shrunk trunks expanding in compartments at inopportune moments to cause havoc. Apparently the headmaster's friend Elphias Doge had been hit on the head by a suddenly normal-sized falling trunk in his youth, and had been several weeks in recovering (although the unkind might suggest that Elphias had _never_ fully recovered). And that was _without_ the added complications of pupils _deliberately_ cancelling shrinking charms on trunks as malicious pranks or as tactics in the middle of fights…

At least the transferring-the-trunks-to-the-castle operation was going smoothly tonight. Severus Snape was never flustered, but right now he had rather a lot of other things piled on him, some of them not planned for, and the first day of a new school year was hardly a time for having the unplanned piled onto him.

Right now he had an animagus beetle in a glass jar in his pocket whom he suspected was illegal, the deputy headmistress wanting every tenth trunk to arrive in the castle put aside for a search for contraband items (on orders from the headmaster – including a _specific_ direction to make sure that Sophie Potter's trunk was one of those), the house elves in the kitchen in a tizzy because a supplier had sent a case full of the _wrong_ champagne and for whatever culinary reasons what had arrived was unsuited to what had been _planned_ for dessert, several aurors and the Minister for Magic in or around the castle, and for some reason the headmaster had pulled Nymphadora Black off control of arriving pupils for twenty minutes and summoned her to his office to discuss something – which latter meant that _Severus_ had been put in to fill in for her whilst she was absent.

Severus shuddered to think of how they'd cope at Hogwarts on a first day of term like this if someone as capable as himself were not around. Actually, they probably _wouldn't_ cope. Many of the teaching staff, including the headmaster and his deputy, had an almost fatal lack of common sense, which tended to be only aggravated by any crisis involving anything remotely unexpected. In a crisis the headmaster and his deputy made metaphorical headless chickens look _good_. They focussed on whatever had most _immediately_ grabbed their attention, in doing so losing sight of practically everything else – including whatever they had just previously been doing. The 'Dark Wizard Attack Drills' the school had each term (although practically everyone called them 'Grindelwald Drills') were Severus' attempt to at least make sure that the teaching staff behaved in a halfway sensible fashion in a crisis, although they _still_ tended to be thrown for a loop any time one of them was playing a 'traitor' as part of a drill – which didn't bode well given that any _real_ attack on Hogwarts might well, in Severus' opinion, involve the attempted infiltration of an imposter onto the staff or the blackmailed, bribed, or magical subversion of a member.

'I don't know why you and Lily don't help us more in more of these drills.' Minerva had grumbled of the drills to Severus on one occasion. 'Everything runs like clockwork when you two are around.'

'Which is why, Minerva, any dark wizards or those of nefarious attentions _informed_ of the Hogwarts situation are likely to wait until we are _absent_ from the castle for any reason, or otherwise engaged, before making any moves.' Severus had riposted. Although _some_ dark wizards with a 'thing' for dark magic behaved in a fashion at least as hopelessly lacking in sense as some of the teaching staff, the _last_ British 'dark lord' and his allies had in general behaved in an anything-but-haphazard fashion (and indeed Lily was of the opinion that there was a better-than-even chance that 'Lord Voldemort' might have employed one or more of the known means for a wizard to cheat death and return some day despite being apparently deceased).

Still, Erica would be involved in the _next_ drill, which would be interesting to observe – assuming that she wasn't grounded. Right now Severus was on his way to Hogsmeade station to try to find out just _what_ had happened to his eldest daughter – a rather garbled message having arrived at the castle _instead_ of her, which said she was down at the station assisting with the trunk operation, and that the only convenient way out of it was if he arrived to collect her.

House-elves parting before him, Severus Snape reached the bottom of the goods elevator shaft, spread his arms, and took off, soaring into the air and up towards ground-level.

Being able to fly without a broomstick or similar device could be exceptionally useful at times. It saved on climbing stairs in areas warded against portkeys and apparition for one thing.

"I told the head-girl you'd assigned me to the Express to assist with the baggage vans so as not to give away to her that mum had sent me to keep an eye on Sophie, and then I couldn't very well _not_ assist as that would have been suspicious." Erica did her best to explain herself in the face of Severus' gaze. Father and daughter were now in an office at Hogsmeade station, under privacy wards.

"I see." said Severus. "You lied to the head-girl."

"It's Nymphadora Black as head-girl, this year, and she gives me the _creeps_, dad. I didn't want her knowing that Sophie was Sophie, since Sophie wanted to keep who she was secret. There wasn't any other reason I could think of to tell her for my being on the Express apart from the real one, which she might believe. And I _did_ help the house-elves at all the stations."

"And did Miss Potter accompany you to assist the house-elves with the baggage vans at each station?"

Erica squirmed.

"Well no. But she had joined up with Neville Longbottom and a muggle-born first-year, Hermione Granger, who seemed decent sorts, and I thought she could probably look after herself for short periods. She's absolutely _brilliant_, dad, for a first-year. There was a moment when another pupil – Ronald Weasley – pointed his wand at her, and she disarmed him just like _that_." Erica attempted to snap her fingers, although the result was less than successful.

"News of the antics on the train of the latest member of the Weasley family to arrive at Hogwarts have by now filtered through to me. I trust that had Mr. Weasley actually started to cast something and Miss Potter _not_ been quite so fast on the disarm, that _you_ would have done something to ensure that she was safe?"

Erica bit her lip.

"Oh."

"Indeed, 'oh'." Severus said, as he saw realisation hit home. He waited a few moments. "Your mother seems to have had one of her 'Gryffindor moments' when she assigned you to the Express earlier today. Nevertheless, things seem to have worked – _this_ time – but I will expect a written report from you about today, including what you think went right, and what mistakes you think were made, and how you or others could have done things better. For now, though, I am releasing you from any sense of obligation to stay at this end and assist with the trunks – I'm sure that whilst the elves have enjoyed having you around that they can manage this time without your further aid."

"There was something else." Erica frowned for a moment, then as she recalled what it was she looked _more_ worried. "One of the second years was possessed by a malevolent spirit – when it came out of her it looked like some sort of toad. A first year had recognised the signs of possession and alerted a prefect, and this year's defence professor was able to get rid of the spirit, but the defence professor said something about the spirits being oriental ones that either head for areas there are going to be great catastrophes or get _sent_ into places in victims by dark-wizards _hoping_ to _cause_ trouble."

Severus paused a moment to digest this particular information. Whilst he doubted that (even given the headmaster's latest insane project) any great catastrophe was likely to befall Hogwarts this year, absent a great deal of outside assistance, Hogwarts (or a least its current headmaster) certainly had… enemies. Some of them were ones who before they acted, Albus Dumbledore had never given Severus any indication that he knew even existed – like that clan of seedy Japanese wizards, for example, who had been obsessed with trying to steal the headmaster's wand for some reason, several years back. Europeans with an unhealthy fascination for anything Grindelwald related, Severus might have been able to understand trying to steal the headmaster's wand, but the headmaster had never given Severus a satisfactory explanation for why _Japanese_ dark wizards might be interested in acquiring his wand – not even _after_ Severus and a couple of dozen Hogwarts house-elves had paid them the compliment of a 'return engagement' and convinced them to leave Hogwarts alone and stop sending those ridiculous 'ninjas' in to make a mess dying on the lawns, falling off the walls, and providing late-night snacks for the linnorm.

Maybe this toad spirit was a thought by one of them or their associates, and Hogwarts was going to be in for _another_ dose this year of midnight calls by 'martial wizards' dressed in what amounted to black silk pyjamas who were anxious to try to steal the headmaster's wand. Severus hoped not, but clearly he was going to have a word with this year's defence professor about _exactly_ what he'd dealt with on the train, and maybe get in contact with last year's defence professor, Ms. Takahashi, and correlate details with her. Oh, and he was going to have to let the headmaster know about this later in private, if he hadn't heard about it already, and see if he was interested in divulging any more information about those ninjas – although there was precious little chance of the headmaster actually doing so.

And it was _possible_, the thought was there, that this _could_ be related in some way to a particular third floor corridor, and what the headmaster was about to spend the year pretending to the pupil population that he _wasn't_ keeping up there, whilst he simultaneously engaged in what amounted to a staring-contest with his teaching staff, waiting to see if any of them had treacherous thoughts and were going to lose their nerve and blink…

No, this was certainly _not_ going to be a year for Severus to have the unplanned piled onto him. Unfortunately, _somebody_ had to deal with it.

"I'll have a word with Professor Singh about it later, although you can include as much detail as you can recall about it in your report, too." Severus told his eldest daughter. "Now, unless there's anything else, let's get you up to the castle, since we both know she won't show it but your mother will be worrying like crazy about you."

* * *

Author Notes: (subject to update depending on early reviews)

The Hogwarts № 1 goods tunnel of the Saint Potter universe and a number of other excavations were part of a series of engineering projects of the late 1970's/early 1980's (which also included a fortified outlying 'postal hub' and entirely new living quarters for Slytherin pupils). The goods tunnel was built for the convenience of moving supplies (most often incoming food deliveries) directly between Hogsmeade station and the castle, the multiple layers of protection and warding around the castle making apparition or portkeys problematic, and a tunnel avoiding what problems adverse weather conditions or other 'above ground' circumstances might pose to travel by road.

Although Severus Snape's job-title in the Saint Potter universe is 'caretaker', the actual duties and powers he has are extensive and include basically commanding the defence of the castle in the event of outside attack, negotiating with neighbours (including the centaurs and merpeople) and if absolutely necessary leading retaliatory military actions against organizations which have attacked the castle multiple times - if such military actions are likely to discourage further such attempted invasions. Severus Snape has considerable discretionary funds currently available to him on an annual basis, courtesy of the late Regulus Black, who was a good friend. Building works he considers necessary can be financed independent of the governors or headmaster.

Normal schools in the UK have 'fire-drills' to ensure everyone in theory knows what to do and where to go in a crisis. In the Saint Potter universe, Severus Snape introduced the concept of 'dark wizard attack drills' as a sort of counterpart, attack by dark wizards being likely more of a problem than simple fires breaking out in a magical castle.

As of the first of September, 1991, Severus and Lily Snape have eight children. Severus and Lily married on the 28th June, 1978, and their eldest child, William, was born in March 1979. Their daughter Erica, was born in January, 1980. The castle house-elves count to a considerable extent as 'extended family' for Severus and Lily, and are of considerable assistance in managing to cope with all the children.

As of the 1st of September, 1991, Severus Snape is unaware of any particular significance to the wand Albus Dumbledore currently uses, beyond that it's the one the headmaster took from Grindelwald at the end of the famous duel. The Japanese wizards, who were so keen on acquiring it, did so on the orders of their lord - who suspected that it was 'The Elder Wand' of legends.


End file.
